Deserving You
by AkamaiMom
Summary: Jack and Sam and a couch and a conversation about precisely nothing.  Sweet, sweet nothing.  Unabashed fluff.  Unapologetic squee-worthy cotton-candy-like fluff.  Enjoy!


_Inspired by an avatar picture used by a SG1poz over on GW during the Shipsgiving celebration that showed a radiant Sam and Jack—a little older—maybe appearing a little more civilian. Short fluffy fluff. _

_There is absolutely no reason behind this fic other than an excuse for a little squeeing. _

_So—squee on, folks. Squee on. _

**Deserving You**

"Your hair's getting long."

"Too long?"

"No, just longer than normal."

"And that's a bad thing?"

Sam smiled, even though her husband couldn't see her. He was laying on the couch, propped up with a few pillows, their newborn son asleep on his chest in what Vala had called the "stinkbug" position—arms and legs tucked inward and his little diapered butt in the air. Sam just called it wonderful. Especially as Benjamin was framed against the wide expanse of his daddy's chest, clad as it was in its customary Air Force tee-shirt. Biting back a rush of emotion—something that she'd been blaming on the hormones still laying siege to her body—Sam couldn't control the ridiculous grin that had taken over her face. Usually she had more self-control than this. Sam Carter O'Neill was afraid, however, that this quickness to emote was rapidly becoming a large part of her "normal".

Which wasn't all that bad a thing, was it? When you'd finally made it—finally gotten what was real and good and right—a few tears one way or another were to be expected—and maybe even needed. Because 'happy' cried, too, and it was okay. She'd learned this, recently.

"No. It's definitely not a bad thing."

The General forged onward. "I figured that since I was taking a few weeks off with Ben, here, I'd just let it grow. Go Hippie, or something."

"You've already done Hippie, Jack." But his frown told Sam that he hadn't followed her line of thinking. She lifted a brow. "Nineteen Sixty-nine?"

"Oh yeah—right. Forgot about that." Jack shifted on the couch, arcing his neck so that he could see her standing behind him. "Because I could cut it."

Sam shook her head. Setting down the laundry basket she'd been holding, she stepped towards him, leaning over to brace her hands on either side of where his head lay on the arm of the sofa. "You know what the sad thing is about that statement, Jack?"

"No—what?"

Her eyes widened. "Normal people say, 'I could get it cut.'"

"So?"

"So." She paused for effect. "So you, in all your cheap Midwestern frugality, say that _you_ could cut it because that's actually what _you_ do."

"Hey—I've been doing it myself for years. I don't see why I need to go pay someone else to get all touchy touchy with me."

"Jack." She'd been working on her 'mom' tone. His reaction told Sam she'd improved. "It's just a haircut. The last thing they want to do is get all 'touchy-touchy' with you."

"Well, they don't know what they're missing."

"Ha ha."

He scowled. "Why pay good money for something I can do on my own? It's ridiculous what they charge. Every time you go get something done, I feel like I need to take out a second mortgate."

Sam rolled her eyes. Loudly. "They're—like—fifteen dollars at one of those walk-in places."

The baby squirmed, and Jack stepped up the pace on the patting of his back. Or course, it might have been because he was holding Ben that he was brave enough to mimic his wife at the same time. "And I can walk into my bathroom and do it—like—for free."

Sam canted her head to one side. "We really don't need to be so penny pinching. We're not all that broke, you know."

"We're also not rich."

"We don't need to save fifteen lousy bucks on a haircut."

"Hey—fifteen bucks is fifteen bucks." His eyes flared. "We're buying diapers, now, remember?"

"I know that." She spoke clearly and patiently, as if to a child of limited acuity. "But there are times when it's better to just spend the money and be sure of your outcome."

He mulled that over briefly before answering. "So, you're saying I don't look good when I cut my own hair?"

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you meant."

Still hovering over him, she leaned back a little to take an objective view of his head. Well-shaped—squareish—solid. His hair line hadn't receded at all over the years. Grayer—almost completely so, now. Still thick. She reached a hand out to rifle through the coarse strands, then dug her fingers through the mass, furrowing the strands, her fingertips massaging lazy, radiating circles on his scalp.

His groan urged her on, and she passed her hand down to his neck, rubbing the sensitive spot behind his ear and then down the strong column of his throat. Tracing her fingertips along his jaw, she paused to feel the steady beat of his pulse before delving lower. Carefully, she leaned further over and slid her hand under the band at his neckline, to tangle her fingers softly in the hair she found there. She stopped there, hindered by the baby still sleeping on his chest.

His sigh thrummed beneath her palm.

"Sam?"

"Yes, Jack?"

He tilted his head to place a kiss on the pale skin near her elbow. "I don't deserve you."

With a sigh, she bent down further, pressing her lips first to his forehead, and then to his cheek, and then to the bridge of his nose. Laying her hands on either side of his jaw, she tilted his face just enough that she could lean down and kiss his mouth upside down, slowly, lingering, brushing her mouth side to side over his before teasing his lips apart and going deeper. At last she lifted her head a little, her own hair framing them in a golden fall. As an afterthought, she nipped a little at his bottom lip with her teeth, before pressing a final kiss to the corner of his lips. And then they shared a mutual sigh, warm breath mingling, rippling the sheen of blond that surrounded them.

After a moment, when she could speak again, she tapped his jaw with her fingertip. "Jack."

"Yeah?"

"About that whole deserving thing."

"As in, you, and the fact that I don't?"

"Yeah." She stroked his lips with her thumb. "Only, thing is—I think you do."

"Long Hippie hair and all?"

"Yes."

"Cheap Midwestern frugality and all?"

"Most definitely."

He smiled, looking up at her, still, pouting a little bit when she withdrew her hand from his skin and used it to brace herself on the arm of the couch again. "Sam."

"Mmm?"

"I like what you just did, there."

Sam grinned down at him. "You do, huh?"

"Yes. I do." His expression turned devious. "You want to know why?"

"Why?" Her eyes narrowed in speculation. "Because you like smooching, that's why."

"Nope."

"No?"

"Nope." He tried to look serious. "It's because when you stand that way, I can see right down your shirt."

Sam smiled and let out a little giggle. "I love you, too, Jack."


End file.
